Monthly Archives: August 2014

Our six-year wedding anniversary, and it fell on a Saturday this year. What should we do with ourselves? Well obviously we ought to take a piece of taxidermy with us and head on up to the Ice Box Cemetery in Northern GA. It was a beautiful day to take a mini-roadtrip anyway, get some bagels, load up a Nerdist podcast guest starring Alex Trebek and spending some quality time with our pig.

The abandoned ice box cemetery didn’t offer much in the way of bathrooms, however, and shortly after the turn off the highway, we found a place that might offer…

Well, it didn’t mention anything about bathroom, but this place seemed to stress an abundance of goats. On the roof.

Indeed, this place did not have much- a candy and fudge shop, a gift shop selling Olde Country Tyme jars of apple butter, and a bathroom cottage.

Oh, there were also some of these.

So yes, for the low low price of absolutely free, Goats on the Roof delivers exactly what it promised. Five stars.

Next we were off to the Icebox Cememtery, located on a rarely-used, nauseatingly winding road up a steep hill. At least it was empty and rarely-used up until the instant that we found the cemetery and got out of the car, pig taxidermy in tow and a tripod for our annual anniversary picture.

Yes, there was not a soul in sight until we appeared. Then the Truman show suddenly showed up. Know that movie the Truman show? I’m referring to that scene where everything is calm, empty and serene, but the minute Truman tries to drive out of his dome-city, suddenly every car in town is on the road and on Truman’s street. That’s called the Truman Show effect. Six muddy Jeeps in a row rushed by, followed by a pickup truck that slowed to a crawl, and I could see through their windows that both the driver and passenger were gaping at us. It must be because I’m just so pretty. It got to be comically annoying, where we had to hide the pig behind the ice box every time we heard a car coming, then shouting “Game on!” once the car had passed. Jon snapped some pictures of the area, an abandoned bait shop.

Atlas Obscura has steered us to many a magical place in the past, but I gotta be honest- the Icebox Cemetery was a bit underwhelming, mostly because there were only one or two iceboxes laid to rest here. The other must have been resurrected during a Last Judgment.

Fortunately, we didn’t come all this way just to see an underwhelming icebox cemetery and lofty goats- we were just a skip away from Brasstown Bald, the Highest Point in Georgia. We’ve never been seriously into that whole high-pointer gig, but I wouldn’t rule out giving it a whirl someday. Sometimes there are bear sightings.

Obviously we like to go on trips, and every now and then we make a special effort to bring The Dog along. But sometimes the dog is just…a little too much Dog, and we want to give some of our other pets a chance to come along and join the fun. Recently, we realized that our The Lizard is nine years old, has been with us for eight years, and yet she’s consistently left out on our trips. So we brought her along on a quick trip to Stone Mountain, hoping that she might be one of only very few bearded dragons who have ever been to the summit.

And rest his soul, we also made a point to bring out Gordie the guinea pig once or twice. He played angel guinea-pig at a cemetery once:

And on New Year’s Day, we took a trip out to Springfield to visit the snow-covered Dr. Suess Garden. Gordie had to bundle up for that one.

Well, yesterday was Jon’s and my 6-year wedding anniversary and to celebrate it, we went off on a mini-trip to see the Icebox Cemetery in northern Georgia. But who to bring with us? The dog? Eh, it’s a little hot for car trips with dogs right now. The Lizard? Nah, her facial expression of constant disdain gets tiresome on long trips. Well, we don’t have a guinea pig anymore, but maybe some other, smiling laughing pig would be good company. So we brought Will.

What some people don’t know about taxidermed animal heads is that sometimes they get bored staying at home 24/7, staring at the walls. They like to see the world sometimes. Will was so excited that he asked to sit shotgun for part of the trip.

He liked telling jokes.

What do you call a pig thief? A HAM-burglar!

Eventually this got tiresome and Jon’s sense of humor ran out.

Will was sent back to sit in the backseat until we arrived at the Icebox cemetery. He photographs well. Doesn’t move around a lot.

More later about the trip, maybe less about Will’s contribution. I like our wedding anniversaries.